Jewish family whose home was ‘squatted’ by French ambassadors ‘lost 14m euros in rent’, lawyer says

The story of Beit Lawee goes back to a time when Iraq’s Jews thrived. One of the world’s oldest communities, some 90,000 Jews lived in Baghdad in the 1940s and the Lawee brothers Ezra and Khedouri were successful businessmen who owned American car concessions. In 1935 they bought land and built a 3,800 sq m Hollywood-style mansion, where their families lived together.

But tensions rose and the Farhud pogroms erupted in 1941 when the creation of Israel in part of Mandate Palestine became a prospect.

The Lawee brothers fled the country and resettled in Canada but the house was still theirs and they paid a caretaker to manage it. In 1964 France looked for a location to house its embassy and the two parties signed a rental deal.

When the Bath party came to power, it took control over Jewish property. It told France that it needed to pay its rent to the Iraqi state, not the building’s Jewish owners.

In 1974, France stopped paying rent to the Lawee family but continued to occupy the house.

The rent paid to Iraqi authorities was only a fraction of the market value.

In 2003 Saddam Hussein was toppled, but the French refused to resume payments to the building’s owners.

The family demands that either France pay, accept a settlement or buy the house. But the ministry has refused those options while showing no sign of moving out.

Displaying extreme confidence in its case, the foreign ministry had no legal representation in court.

The court’s judicial expert, while acknowledging that Iraqi law discriminated against Jews “to say the least”, argued that the matter was beyond the Paris hearing’s jurisdiction.

“When events occur in a foreign country, it’s that country’s law that should be applied, unless stipulated otherwise in the contracts,” the adviser said, adding the family should take the case to an Iraqi court. “It is not impossible to get a ruling from the Iraqi state,” he said.

The family’s attorney said he found that suggestion nonsensical.

“My clients can’t go to Iraq and such a case would make no sense in an Iraqi court. It’s ridiculous, humiliating and I seriously doubt Iraqi justice will be independent on the matter,” Jean-Pierre Mignard told reporters.

“If this court declares it is unable to hear the case, then it would be telling my clients, who have been discriminated against and looted, that there is no court to try their case.

“What is happening is that they have been looted with the complicity of the foreign ministry and I am ashamed of this,” Mignard told the court.

“They got a sweeter deal with the Iraqi state. My clients lost 14 million euros in rent. France negotiated this contract with the Iraqi department managing looted Jewish property. It’s similar to the department that managed looted Jewish property in France during World War II.

“The contract that ties the Lawee family to France was accepted by French institutions at the time, it’s written in French, the rent was paid in part in francs, in France, and the contract is identical to the ones used in France to this day. It has no mention of Iraqi law. It served French public services and it fully in line with French law,” the family’s second lawyer, Imrane Ghermi, told the court.

“France is a country that prides itself in defending human rights and it wants to benefit from this illicit situation, which is the complete opposite of every principle France defends,” Mignard told reporters outside the courtroom.

Earlier he had told the court: “This case of looting continues due to the French ministry’s attitude.”

The lawyers said that this was the first case over looted Jewish property in an Arab country ever taken to court. At least 800,000 Jews fled Arab countries between the 1940s and late 1960s.

Syria is the first country to have taken steps to return looted property to Jewish families.

The court said it will deliver its decision in two weeks.